Why there needs to be One Big Union?
As the International Workers of the World (“the Wobblies”) contend, all workers need to be joined together in the struggle. The price of splintering the groups by trade for purposes of collective bargaining has been the health care disaster we see in the United States today. Take Canada, as a contrast. Two generations ago, union leaders in that country were advocating for health care coverage for all Canadians. They got it. In the U.S., unions advocated health care only for themselves. They got it, but nobody else did, and now, because health care in the U.S., where it exists, has only been provided by the business sector, and business is actively seeking to escape this responsibility, we’re all in the ditch.---
Cracker Barrel restaurants depress me. The food’s good enough. (I’m easy to please in that regard.) I’m not even really referring-- specifically-- to the purposefully-antiquated motif of the chain or to the time I saw a magazine advertisement framed on the wall next to my table featuring a man in black face. I’m generally referring to the fact that Cracker Barrel is, to me, a sad reminder of the human displacement of rural America and the downward mobility of country dwellers. It pretends to honor that fast-disappearing and valuable culture, but of course, as a nation-wide corporate restaurant chain, with their outlets almost always located in the exurbs, it has done less than nothing to rescue rural America.
---
Any time you hear a politician use the term “middle class,” that person is denying the existence of a class war. There are only two classes: the top and the bottom. The correct term for those doing the struggling at the bottom of our exploitative economic system (the most of us) is “working class.”
---
The filibuster option may have been struck a blow, but fear not, Republicans, you've still got gerrymandering and voter intimidation.
---
The head of Des Moines Water Works has (rather graciously) invited public debate on the city's plan to continue adding fluoride to the city's public water supply. The Center for Disease Control has found that for every one dollar ever spent on fluoridation by U.S. municipalities, thirty-eight have been saved in private spending on dental care. If those old Birchers out there, and the new Tea Partiers, don't want the government involved in the water business, they're always free to drink out of the rivers.
---
Elf on the Shelf: Preparing your child for life in the Surveillance State.
posted by CM @ 9:24 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home